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ISSUE: KB2844286 Security Update on SharePoint 2010

Came in today to find the following error message showing up on seemingly random web parts and lists throughout our SharePoint 2010 Foundation farm. ULS Logs on the servers weren’t very helpful.

[This issue has been RESOLVED see updates below]

For the sake of search indexing, here is the text version of the error we are getting.

Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator.

We quickly tracked it down to a Security Update that was applied to our web front end servers last night. Check the OS below to find the KB update associated with your server.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2

As a temporary workaround, we found uninstalling the update (KB2844286) from your servers (all WFE’s and App servers) then performing an IISReset on the servers will resolve the issue. Several others have experienced this issue as noted in just one of many forums such as the one below

If I find there is a solution better than uninstalling I will update this post to reflect that. As of right now, uninstalling this update is the best option.

[Update 7/16/2013 3:40pm]

It appears the error typically appears when a list or web part view has had the XSLT customized. At least in our Farm, that has been the common behavior.

[Update 7/17/2013 10:03am]

Not much of an update, but I’m awaiting contact from our Microsoft TAM to see about this issue. If we don’t hear from them soon, then we’ll be opening a ticket with Microsoft. Luckily we were able to work around the issue by uninstalling.

[Update 7/17/2013 12:50pm]

I just received confirmation from our TAM that Microsoft is aware of 2 issues regarding the patch noted in this article above. One of which appears to be the SharePoint issue we’re having.

[Update 7/17/2013 2:43pm]

Just spoke with our Microsoft Sr. Support Escalation Engineer assigned to our premier support ticket and here is their response (summarized).

“Our product group is currently working on the updated patch. We have no ETA for the new release at the moment.”

Looks like we wait then for a resolution.

[Update 7/17/2013 2:59pm]

One more confirmation from Microsoft Support and a link to the forum MS is using to track the issue publicly. No public information just yet beyond that, however.

“Both the SharePoint and .NET product groups are aware of the issue and they are in the process of fixing the patch.”

So far I have heard of no updated patch being released yet by Microsoft. There were two MS Security Bulletin updates but it doesn’t appear they were related to this issue as they were for Bulletin MS12-006 and MS12-052.

[Update 7/21/2013 12:36pm]

Still no updated patch. Received an e-mail from our MS Support representative and they indicated they too have no ETA on any updates to the security patch. I guess I’d rather they take their time then rush an update out all to break something else. It would be a good idea if Microsoft were to either add a note to the update download page indicating the issue, or just pull the update altogether.

[Update 7/24/2013 8:28am]

I just got a message from our Microsoft Support representative and she informed me there is no update as of yet on a new download for the patch. No surprise there.

[Update 7/25/2013 7:50am]

As you can see from the comments that have arrived thus far, it appears Microsoft has provided a fix to the KB2844286 issue. We are in the process of testing it out in our DEV environment now. Let’s hope it fixes it and doesn’t cause more issues.

[Update 7/25/2013 8:22am]

I am at this point, comfortable with counting this issue RESOLVED. We’ve tested it in DEV and the solution resolves the problem and doesn’t seem to break anything else. We won’t be able to complete the resolution in our Production environment until after hours as we will have to re-install KB2844286 which will require a reboot and the patch requires at the very least an IISRESET.

Glad you were able to discover the workaround to uninstall. Not sure how many users you have but we’ve got quite a few and the calls were rolling in when it was installed. Luckily we identified it quickly and got rid of the patch. I could have been much worse than it ended up being.

We are currently testing this update now in DEV to determine if it in fact does fix the issue and if it breaks anything else. Thanks for posting the information. Here is the link to the update for those that visit this site.

Hi, we issued the hotfix for the affected patch and thought the issue was resolved, however we have had some funnies around the app pool recycling. It seems to sort itself when we recycle the app pool agan! Because we didn’t have any of these issues before this hotfix, we have removed the update + hotfix and have re-installed the fixed update for further testing. Has anyone else had intermittant issues with the XSL transform stuff failing since the hotfix for the update was released? Other symptoms include the audience targetting section of the webpart disappearing from the web part settings.

Yep, a few times. It seems to occur intermittantly. The app pools are set to recycle early hours. At this point one or other of our 2 WFE decides it doesn’t like the customized web parts. Looking further into the error logs, it seems to be only the web parts with customized xsl templates. Web parts that have xsl written from the ground up seem to be fine. It seems to be a render speed issue. It’s odd that it’s persistant though and that a second recycle of the app pool seems to clear it. Very odd! We’re just seeing if the fixed update, rather than the original update with hotfix will solve the issue, but I’m suspecting that this is just coincidence that this has all happened at the same time.

Which patch have you installed? We completely uninstalled the original patch on all servers and have blocked it from being installed. Have you tried installing the new patch after uninstalling the old?

KB2872441 hotfix for KB2844286. We have backed these out and replaced with the fixed version of KB2844286 on our test system with no issues so far (but no guarrantees with an intermittant issue). We have a change request to do this to production next week. We will be monitoring from there. By the looks of it though, it seems that it’s not something anyone else is experiencing.